Zika and the Mentality of Control

By Charles Eisenstein

Wednesday,March2nd,2016

The ruling institutions of this world are quite comfortable with a virus.

First with SARS, then H1N1, then ebola and now the Zika virus, mainstream media and official organizations have been quick to recognize and counter the threat with travel advisories, quarantines, research funding, vaccine development, and heightened levels of vigilance. Yet information about other kinds of threats that are just as deadly, such as pharmaceutical residues in drinking water, pesticide contamination, or heavy metal poisoning from air and water pollution, are usually relegated to alternative media, ignored, or even actively suppressed by public health authorities. Why is this?

The ready answer that comes to mind is economic. The manmade threats listed above are byproducts of profitable activities by corporations who have tremendous political influence. If we were to thoroughly address toxic contamination of our biosphere, our entire economic, industrial, medical, and agricultural system would have to change.

More deeply, a virus or other pathogen fits neatly into the basic crisis response template of our culture. First, identify an enemy – some unifactorial cause of the crisis – and then go to war against that enemy using all available technologies of control. In the case of a pathogen, control takes the form of antibiotics, vaccines, or antiviral agents, draining wetlands or spraying them with insecticides, quarantining infected individuals, and perhaps telling everyone to wear facemasks, stay indoors, or restrict travel. In the case of terrorism, control takes the form of surveillance, bombings, drones, border security, and so on. Whatever crisis we face, personal or collective, our pseudo-instinctual tendency is to enact this pattern of response.

Another way to look at it is that in the case of an infectious disease, our society knows what to do (or thinks it knows what to do). The solutions that present themselves are comfortably familiar. We just have to do more of what we have already been doing. We just have to extend the reach of our control-based civilization a little further, control things that hadn’t been under control before. Thus the machinery of containing or conquering a disease coincidentally aggrandizes agendas of social control generally. It justifies, exercises, and develops control systems that can be turned to other purposes.

The plot thickened a few weeks ago when a group of Argentinian doctors claimed that the outbreak is much more closely correlated with a larvacide aimed, ironically enough, at destroying the very mosquitoes that are blamed for the spread of Zika. The larvacide, called pyriproxyfen, was added to drinking water reservoirs in the same areas, and in the same time period, where microcephaly cases have surged.

Obviously, it is much more politically convenient to blame an outside agent for the disease than for governments and large corporations to take responsibility. It is also more ideologically convenient, from the perspective of the narrative of humanity ascending over nature. Rather than blame human activity, we can march against yet another threat from the natural world that we must overcome with a technological solution. That is something our culture is familiar with. Our institutions know how to do that; it exercises their capacities and justifies their existence.

Let us also be cautious, however, about identifying pyriproxyfen as “the cause” of the microcephaly. For one thing, the rush to blame a pesticide isn’t that different from the rush to blame a virus. It still fits into the ideology of control and the mentality of defeating an enemy. In fact, some cases of microcephaly occurred in regions where the pesticide wasn’t in the drinking water; pyriproxyfen, furthermore, is widely used around the world. It is a weak and circumstantial argument that identifies it as the culprit.

In the preceding phrase (“...the culprit.”) I have smuggled in an assumption that lies at the root of the problem. I am assuming there is “a” culprit, a unifactorial cause. Whether it is a virus or a chemical, that gives us something to control, to fight. Whether it is over a virus or over a state government or chemical company, the path to victory is clear.

The ideology of control depends on reductionism, ideally reduction of a problem to a single cause. Multifactorial, nonlinear, emergent problems defy reductionistic strategies. So, while we should undoubtedly ban the use of pyriproxyfen in drinking water immediately, even if the microcephaly epidemic ceases, that doesn’t mean we can continue business as normal and continue thinking in terms of linear cause and effect. Maybe it is Zika plus pyriproxyfen that is causing the deformities? Or maybe the chemical isn’t a direct cause, but increases the effect of some third substance in the body? Or it could be that it disrupts the aquatic ecosystem in some way we don’t understand that elevates another unknown environmental risk factor. We just don’t know.

We need to ask questions like, “What are the ecosystem disruptions that occur when you kill larva in any water (not just drinking water)?” “What are the cumulative and synergystic effects of thousands of artificial chemicals entering the biosphere and our bodies?” “How are we to make decisions about safety, when the usual means for testing safety is to control all variables except the one being tested?” You see, the paradigm of control extends all the way to a key formula for producing scientific knowledge: isolate a variable and test its effects.

Until we begin thinking in holistic terms, we will lurch from one enemy to the next, forever suppressing symptoms even as we worsen the disease. The questions above have no easy answers, but a good first step would be to pull back from the paradigm of dominating the enemy, controlling the Other, and conquering the self, and look with fresh eyes at everything we do from that paradigm: the drones, the prisons, the security state, the war machine, antibiotics, pesticides, genetic engineering, psychiatric medication, debt payment extraction... domination (including domination of “othered” parts of ourselves) threads through our entire civilization. It isn’t working so well anymore.

Comments

A few cracks are appearing in the linear pursuit of one variable at a time, in micro biome research, for instance. But linearity and stopping trials short is a pathway to regulatory approval and money. That is, by commercial logic, a case can be built that way. However, as more and more companies find, a statistical trial that examines few unintended effects can lead to a big mess later. RoundUp herbicide is emerging as a classic case.

So how can the few cracks appearing in this form of logic be broken open?

Thanks for the analysis Charles, I also think this is a pattern from a culture of fear: where the control extends to control us, through continuously seek or create fear. I’ve observed this lately as financial “advisers” tell us we “should” save a certain amount for retirement, we “must” have insurance to protect our families if something happens to us, etc. Even when you buy an appliance, a phone, anything, you are scared by the seller: buy this coverage so you have the object replaced, etc if it’s damaged, disappears or is stolen…getting a “stable” job is the goal for many who go to university, and unemployment is seen as terrible; your house “must” have a fridge, a dishwasher and a dryer. You “must” have a car, even it is now being added to job postings for jobs where travelling is minimum! All these things, along with the Ebola, now Zika and tomorrow who knows what, are ways to keep us busy and scared…we should be busy and scared, but with other things: climate change, resources depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution, social inequality, the coming back of dictators and monsters, and so on…but as all that is as well a product of this culture (and complex sources), we ignore them. We should be busy sharing and teaching and learning, regenerating landscapes and communities, getting really angry about the abuse and imposition from corporations and governments…but being scared at Zika is easier, and allows us to keep working at the same jobs, driving the same cars and watching TV

I love your work! I feel we are unable to think in wholistic terms by simply aiming at it. I worked on the auditing site in the banking industry for several years. I noticed for instance how the market risk department was struggling to assess risk, because the world was changing so fast, so their predictions were turning out quickly to failure… & then came the crash. I started my inner journey around that same time. I had two major triggers. I felt I was threated as a number and the organizations mission statement didn’t tie in to the individual’s job and daily work. I felt there was a ”marketing campaign” through mission statements and visions, but the reality of the operations didn’t match… Well, we all know what happened to the banking industry. On another level, I also felt that the official spirituality was ego driven and hollow. Church was used as a networking place and a lot of the new Age move was re-dressing the ego with new rituals and techniques.

I feel that our consciousness is limited by the collective pool and by our willingness to do our own individual work of growth and maturation. The new thinking (and action) come out of inner shifts of understanding, due to inclusion of opposites, and understanding of the impact of everything we do and think. And the expansion comes out of feeling the impact of what is done on heart level, not from mind change. Mind can only analyze what it knows and sees, but doesn’t have the capacity to produce change on its own, as it can not grasp the larger picture. Expanded thought is an expression of consciousness and inner growth.

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